i know that just about every post i write lately seems to center around politics. i guess it's inevitable, since we're in an election year and currently under the rule of the most authoritarian regime this country's ever seen. for someone who said he was going to be a uniter and a champion of the people, he sure seems to have rustled up a massive hornets nest of independents and political apathists (myself included) all now dead-set against him and his party.

see, before "Dubya" charged into power–with the assist from his brother's administration in Florida, and the slam dunk by the Supreme Court–i was largely a non-partisan liberal socialist whose only agenda was that the big people should help the little people, and the large corporations should not be allowed to hurt the little people or wield any type of power over the government or its citizens. for the most part i didn't care about politics, and i was of the firm opinion that my one voice didn't count for much of anything. i didn't bother to vote, or even to learn about the candidates or delve into the issues of the day. i knew from a philosophical standpoint what type of society i wanted, and i knew that the pursuit of *my goals* in the context of this society full of idiots and greedy bastards would be a futile endeavor. so i contented myself with the idea that i could do things better, but without the responsibility (in the face of certain defeat) to attempt to actually attempt to do so.

all this changed when bush was running for president. for the first time, i felt compelled to do a little research and go to the polls to exercise my civic duty. see my post from Nov. 2000 and the two emails linked to from that post it is interesting going back to the stuff written nearly four years ago, especially the passionate political stuff and seeing what and how i was talking about the issues when i was really *just* seriously delving into them. it's also gratifying to note that i still hold the same opinions to this day, pretty much point for point, issue for issue.

i certainly railed against the Democratic party as being too centrist and in the pockets of the large corps. and lobbyists. that's one thing i've been rather pleased to have seen change with the candidates for this year's Democratic nomination–they are more liberal (except Lieberman) and there are at least a couple candidates who are non-career politicians and beholden to no industry or special interest groups (Clark & Sharpton, though Edwards & Dean may meet the latter qualification). and they are all passionately talking about the issues that matter, in no uncertain terms, and making plans that can make a difference.

now, i'm pleased to say that i'd be proud to count my voice among the supporters of most of the potential Democratic nominees, all of whom (except Lieberman, Sharpton, and Kucinich) i think would make great presidents. having studied the issues, the candidates, and their positions and qualifications, i proudly say that i whole-heartedly throw my lot in with Gen. Wesley Clark. He's got all the qualifications one could hope for in a Presidential candidate, his positions on the issues coincide with mine on many levels, and usually moreso than the positions of the other candidates. but don't just take my words at face value, see how he stacks up (in my mind), and take an opportunity to get yourself an education while you're at it.

as a side note, of all the people who said they'd enjoy filling out one of the blank score sheets, not a one has actually done so. there's still time, if you want to put yourself through the paces and weigh in. '04 ScoreSheet

now, i was originally going to write this post in response to President Bush's first stump speech of the 2004 election campaign (A.K.A. the State of the Union address). in lieu of that, i'll just mention that i thought it was a huge pile of crap, pandering to his conservative constituents while taking direct adolescent stabs at those who disagree with his opinions and policies (a "uniter" indeed). but rather than attempting to debunk the speech myself and recreate the wheel, i figured i'd let those more qualified point out the more obvious flaws, misleading statements, and outright lies in the State of the Union Speech.
i'll also refrain from doing anything other than mentioning the inappropriate and inapplicable moral and religious grandstanding.

finally, i've been pleased to see Wes Clark (though i strongly support separation of church & state, and am loathe to see anyone in or seeking public office touting their religion, especially touting it over someone else's) answering the long-standing and wholly inaccurate Republican idea that liberals are amoral atheistic people (this is me greatly summarizing the point). it really is time that we liberals stand up and point out that the religions we grew up with preached tolerance, brotherly-love, self-sacrifice, and the obligation of the strong to protect and/or help the weak. It was Jesus who said "Love your neighbor as yourself"(Matt 5:43-8; Lev 19:17-18; Matt. 19:18-19; Matt 22:37-40), "as you do unto the least of these my brethren, so also you do unto me" (Matt 25:40), who healed the leprous though they were outcasts, and who instructed the Apostles to go out and preach his word to the Gentiles though they were considered unclean and less than human. In favoring the rich and powerful over those not so fortunate, and in castigating and denigrating those whose race, gender, or sexual orientation differ, the Republican party takes this country in a direction entirely opposite that which was set forth by the very figure from whom they claim to draw all their inspiration and guidance.

ok, so i meant to save that whole religion thing for another post. oh well. extra fuel for the fire, i guess.

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hi. uh… my name's matt. you might remember me from such hits as "posts on a semi-regular basis," or "lies, lies, and more lies." needless to say, considering the time of year, quite a bit has happened since my last post. i'm not going to try to go into it all in one post, but here's a summary, in the form of an ordered list:

1. visited nathan in bloomington over a weekend
2. followed, almost as i predicted, the fun the Courier-Journal was having with Ernie Fletcher's stupid transition team choices, and his lies about them not being lined up for jobs. he hadn't even been sworn into office yet, and already his making questionable choices and getting reamed for it by the liberal media.
3. got to meet sara's new niece Emma Rose
4. got a new cell-phone, but had to wait a week for it to work, because of the whole number-portability thing
5. went home for thanksgiving and finally got to meet my new niece Emma Ruth
6. made some modifications to the MP3 of the moment thing… anyone notice? — for a while, i was uploading the mp3 directly from WinAmp to the server, and the magic script gnomes were providing a link to it for you to download. i scrapped that in favor of…
7. more modifications to replace the previous modifications — now, if you see the little "listen (x)" link after the MP3 name, (on my side anyway), you can "tune in" to my bipolar radio stream.
8. even more modifications that basically entailed me taking the javascript that was driving the MP3otM thing, and converting it all to PHP. — oh yeah, and, it doesn't show up at all if it's been more than 30 minutes since we last listened to anything.
9. finally managed to get around to buying christmas presents, spent way too much, but found some cool stuff.

sara's working on her 1st semester finals this week, so i've been trying to keep her sane. i'm just looking forward to the rest of the month, at least until she starts her 2nd semester. it'll be nice to be able to hang out with her without her worrying about a test or having to study 90% of the time.

i'm looking forward to this next week as well. christmas with the fam is always an enjoyable time, even if i'm somewhat of a anti-social hermit while i'm there. i've been getting better over the years, we'll see what happens this time.

btw. winamp5 has been officially released.

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well now. the last post sparked quite a round of commentary. it's always amazed me how certain topics in certain circles can be so powerfully mobilizing. equally amazing is that often the most vehement and violent reactions are provoked by those topics that have the least chance of ever truly reaching a universal solution or consensus–abortion, religion, church & state, star trek vs. star wars, capt. kirk vs. capt. picard vs. capt sisko, windows vs. mac vs. amiga.

which is not to say that the commentary on the last post was vehement or violent, it was actually quite stimulating, exciting, and informative. if you haven't read them yet, you should.

aside from taking part in political discussions, i've been keeping myself busy. keeping my favorite girl relaxed and happy during her stressful educational endeavor. and pursuing all those other little tasks that i've outlined for myself.

i've nearly finished the database design for My Favorite Martyr. i've finished reading a few of the many books that have been piled up on my bookshelf for the last year or so. i went home for a visit with the family for my brother's birthday (he just turned 16, so if you're in the vicinity of Princeton, KY, be sure to keep a very sharp eye on any other cars on the road.) let's see… the band has recorded the main tracks of the last song of our album, so now we're getting down to mixing in earnest, adding extra layers, and writing new material. i've bought a flash book and am trying to teach myself that. and by god, now i'm very nearly 30 friggin years old. not yet damn it! not yet. but almost.

finally, to bring this back around to the topic of politics (my pet subject, of late), i'd like to be the first to point out my new 2004 Candidate Score Sheet. i'd like to be the first to point it out, but ironically enough, my friend ben has beaten me to it on the community blog he frequents–Lost in Louisville. He beat me to it, 'cause i've been showing it to him the last few days as it's been developing, and i'm a slow bastard about writing a new post. what does it mean when a veteran blogger gets beat to the punch on announcing one of his own projects? i'm not sure, but it's gotta be something profound.

anyway, check out the Score Sheet, and make note of the fact that there's even a link up at the top where you can get a blank version of the chart so you can do your own. if you're really cheeky, you might even email your chart to me (a completed HTML version would be easiest for those of you who know your way around the code, otherwise, just however you see fit.) and i'll figure out some place to put links to them all. sounds like a fun project for the whole family!

ok. enough with tha jibba-jabba. my boss is letting me leave work early–who am i to argue?!

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woohoo! i finally found a plugin for WinAmp3 that will let me update the MP3 of the moment thing. (look at the bottom of the most recent post, and/or my webcam "portable"). i had switched to exclusively using WinAmp3 for a while, then i decided i wanted to do the MP3otM thing, realized there weren't any decent plugins to do that with WinAmp3, so i had to switch back to WinAmp 2.x. (which has just been updated to 2.91, for those of you still using the 2.x version). anyway, i finally found What's Playing today, and did some quick hacking to get it working with the existing javascript code. When i get a chance later, i'll probably move it totally over to PHP scripts, but it's working right now. yaay!

tomorrow (today, technically–the 26th) is the day when Sara finally runs the last leg of the Louisville Triple Crown–the miniMarathon. i know she's excited (mainly that it'll all be over soon and she can quit putting herself through hell) to finally finish. i just hope she doesn't hurt her knee any worse than she's already apparently hurt it. in any event, i'm sure she's going to do well.

and, (strange, this was supposed to be a quick update) my sister got in town on Wednesday night and has been staying at the house. it's been pretty wild to see my sister pregnant and to be talking with her about all this stuff, watching her, basically fawning over her to make sure she's got everything she needs. it's pretty cool.

later today, after the race and breakfast, we'll all (my sister, my girlfriend, myself) be driving down to my parent's. this'll be the first time Sara's met my parents, and though she's nervous, i know my parents are going to love her. plus, with my sis being in from France, and pregnant, i think they'll have bigger things to worry about than giving my girlfriend a hard time. i guess we'll find out though, eh?

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i just stumbled across the Wikipedia while looking up Glockenspiel for a minor update to the Lucifigous Prick about page. Wikipedia looks to be an awesome thing–an open source encyclopedia, built and maintained by a broad internet community. It's an encyclopedia that, should you find an article you disagree with, you can change (or recommend changes) to better fit the facts as you know or understand them. I think i may have to add some functionality to my bookmarklet to add an option for searching the Wikipedia.

In other fun news, our show on the 11th went alright, except that the people (there was another show scheduled earlier in the evening) who were on stage before us didn't get off-stage until 15 minutes before we were supposed to start playing. Seeing as it takes us most of an hour to get all our equipment set up, it was 10:45pm before we even started playing. So there were several people who kept asking us when we were going to be ready, and that we needed to start "soon." Needless to say, we were all a bit frustrated before we even played the first note, and the first half of the set pretty much reflected that–we were a little tight and held-back. Really, we didn't play badly at all… we were just "in a mood." I think most of the crowd was enjoying what we were doing, but i was a bit too frustrated to pay attention at the time.

Ah well, this sort of stuff is to be expected every once in a while, i'd say.

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well, i've gotta say, the first few weeks of this year have been just as good as the last few months of last year. so far, so good. i generally don't like to make resolutions, so i've avoided it this year as usual. of course, there are things that i'm trying to do in my life to improve it, but that process started many years ago.

for the past several days, i've been working like crazy on getting the Old Man site whipped into shape and ready for public consumption (that link isn't live *yet*, but will be soon). The really sad thing is, i think i've ended up putting together a better site for them than i made for my own band… ah well, guess that just means i'll have to overhaul the prick site soon.

and speaking of getting things whipped into shape… i just went out on monday and played racquetball with friend & co-worker ben while our respective significant others did their own workout routine. now, he beat me solidly at 3 games to 1, but i figure i did pretty well considering i've only just stopped smoking recently (well, in the past couple months), and i haven't had a lick of exercise since the last time i played baseball with him & his crew. and before baseball… the last exercise i had was probably the last time i went running… nearly a year ago. needless to say, this body is pushing 30 (well, ok, pulling 29) and severely out of shape. but, i did actually manage to make it through four entire games (and could have done more if the gym hadn't been closing), and i managed to hold my own throughout. ben pretty much took me to school for the first couple games, but once i remembered what the hell i was doing and got warmed up, it was pretty much a dead heat, even battle. i think i can take him, next time.

damnit. i had something else to say, but by the time i got a browser window open to load… whatever it was… up, i forgot what the hell it was i was going to look up. sometimes i really hate being so easily distractable.

anyway, i fully expect you all to hold your breath in anticipation of the new old-man.net. oh, and have a happy geeky wednesday!

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well folks, it's new years eve… day… or something. it's about time for that yearly wrap-up post wherein we cannibalize old material for new jokes, or just include a bunch of links to old posts so that the old material can provide its own punchline.

i haven't yet started to go back through the posts from this past year, but i have this feeling that it's going to be like a harvest after a drought… not much to pick from. i know i've been negligent this past year (plus some) and haven't posted as much as i should, partially because i've been attempting to develop some sort of social life, partly because some events occurred that took up a bunch of my time without really providing me with anything worthwhile to talk about, and partly because some events have occurred recently that are happily *still* taking up a bunch of my time and i choose not to go into detail about it other than to say that i'm immensely happy.

without further ado, here are the 10 most exciting/interesting things that have happened this year (and that i've previously written about) — (in chronological order, old to new):

1. The France Plan, part 1 — started talking about taking a trip to France early in the year, which eventually became a plan to go for my sisters wedding late in the year.

2. I wrote a story that eventually came to pass.

3. Put my task list up for a vote and released the first public Lucifigous Prick demo track. (which i apparently need to upload to the new server…)

4. I posted some pictures from my and brian's trip to romulus.

5. Spider-Man

6. went to visit nate.

7. Designed some flyers, started revving up for the first Lucifigous Prick show, and continued to make the same realizations about how i really needed to get off my ass and do something.

8. The number of my co-workers continues to dwindle ("Five!" … "Three sir." … "Three!")

9. Lucifigous Prick had our second show.

10. i finally made it to France for my sister's wedding.

and those are, unfortunately, the highlights. that's what i get for being a bum about posting on a regular basis. the majority of my posts are about the fact that i don't post often enough.

but, to stop putting a negative spin on things and reiterate what a great year this has been for anything other than posting to bipolar, the highlights are: Lucifigous Prick gets several shows under it's belt, I get to go to France (and for nothing less than my sister's wedding to a great guy), and i meet an awesome girl who makes me immeasurably happy. all-in-all, a great year to remember, and i think next year will be even better.

so, to all our friends, to all of you who've been reading for almost three years now, and to those of you who just stop by on occasion, have a safe & happy new year!

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well, christmas time is upon us, and i'm heading out of town for the (now twice yearly) visit with my grandmother and extended family. i'm looking forward to being able to relax and enjoy the holidays, because it seems like i've been just running about like mad for the past two or so weeks… christmas present shopping, christmas party planning, lucifigous prick show planning & practicing, and website moving. feels like there've been too many stops & starts in the past few weeks–run about like crazy working on five things, then briefly stop, slow down, and enjoy one of these things that i've worked very hard to make or help make happen. then crank it back up and work some more 'til i can enjoy another one of them.

i've also been spending a large amount of time with the new lady in my life–a wonderful beautiful girl with whom i have fallen deeply and blissfully in love. i'm trying to take advantage of her free time right now, because i know that when she starts school in the Fall, i'm not going to get to spend nearly as much time with her. and speaking of this new love of mine, this will be the first christmas in many years when i've actually been with someone and had to leave them behind during the holidays. it's going to be such a mixed emotional bag, this christmas, but i think i'll survive.

anyway, it's been such a ghost town around here lately, what with the server problems and us both having new ladyfriends and thus not posting a whole bunch… i just wanted to make a post before i head for the mountains of Virginia to wish you all happy holidays.

may you all find warmth and happiness among family and friends.

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well, i've been back from France for about four days now, but i've been so busy trying to play catch-up in my "real" life and my "work" life that i've not had time to write a new post. i've finally gotten a moment to breathe tonight, though, so here we are.

France was awesome. i think i've said this like 200 times in the last four days. i loved it, thoroughly, but, i'm not going to get into it too much right now, because my ultimate plan is to transcribe my journal entries here for you guys to read/ignore.

i also took 11 rolls of film with me, and finished off every one of them. hopefully, i'll be getting the pictures back this weekend or early next week, and i'll work them up using my handy-dandy developed-for-lucifigousprick.com photo gallery scripts.

there's also a plan in the works to collaborate with jason (who i met in deauville) on a site just to commemorate my sister's wedding.

needless to say, when i was leaving Paris on the last day of my trip, the only thing that i could think of was that i didn't want to leave. i am so enamored with Paris that i want to get back there as soon as i can. hell, i've even entertained the possibility of moving there, which for me is a huge/strange thing. i also love louisville, and, until seeing Paris, i couldn't have imagined any place i'd rather live than here. but, with the slight scent of change on the winds the way it's been in the past few months, it seems that this thought of moving isn't as absurd as it would've seemed even a year ago. (i know i've just opened myself up to about 6 months of "so, when're you moving up here" from nathan, but that can't be helped.)

there's also this feeling in my life right now… that i'm on the verge of something, awaiting something. i can't quite pinpoint it, but the feeling is there… something is happening, or will happen. hopefully, it'll all be good, whatever it is. but it's put me in this state where i'm just thinking that i have *got* to get my shit together. maybe i'm just headed into one of my manic cycles, i dunno.

expect journal entries shortly. like, maybe as soon as tomorrow, if you're lucky.

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slow day at work today. i tend to like these days about as much as i dislike them.

i've spent quite a bit of the day fighting with my jabber client (or more correctly, the jabber server i use), and have had little IM love going on. another big chunk of my day has been spent perusing the "Photoshop Phriday" and "Comedy Goldmine" threads over at somethingawful. if you like stuff that's funny… uh… you should go check it out.

my most recent obsession has become… polishing my boots. for about 2 years or so, i've pretty much never taken a polish brush to my combat boots (my only form of footware), so, needless to say, they were looking pretty rough. very little actual black left on them, and huge chunks taken out of the leather all 'round the heel & toes.

so, about three weeks ago, i broke out the ol' polish kit and gave 'em a quick once over. since then, i've been polishing them once or twice a week. today (i've now dubbed Wednesday as boot-polishing day–since i don't usually eat lunch on Wed. i can polish them on my lunch break.) i actually gave them a quick spit-shine. they seem to like it. i'm actually thinking about maybe taking some time tonight to finish the job… yeah, we're definitely getting to the obsession level with this whole polishing thing, i think.

ah well, never did seem to have a problem finding something with which to distract myself.

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